The theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is introduced. Features of QCD as the nontrivial vacuum due to quark and gluon condensate and asymptotic freedom at high-energy scales are discussed. The concept of perturbative QCD and the running of the coupling constant is established. The equation of state of QCD at high temperatures from lattice QCD is reviewed and confronted with perturbative QCD calculations. The QCD equation of state at high baryon density is discussed. Properties of selfbound stars are developed where the equation of state has a nonvanishing pressure at a nonvanishing energy density. The mass–radius relation of pure quark stars is examined and compared to the limits from causality.

We will next move to discuss the Standard Model (SM) of electroweak and strong interactions. We will present the basic SM Lagrangian, andwe will discuss various properties of this simplest theory, but we will not do any phenomenology at this stage. There are many excellent books on the dynamics of the SM, and we will in most cases skip derivations of well-known formulae to save space and in particular energy for the later steps that are not covered in detail in textbooks. The most important result of this step will be collection of the Feynman rules for those interactions present in the SM that we will need for explicit calculations as we proceed. For readers' convenience we will collect these rules in an Appendix.